Pakistan Gamers League 2K16

After a successful event earlier this year, Pak Gamers Republic is back with a more ambitious competition.

By
Noman Ansari

Back in May, Pak Gamers Republic (PGR) hosted an esports event that became the talk of the gaming community in Lahore. They now are returning with a larger event called Pakistan Gamers League. We spoke with them to learn more.

What can you tell us about your new event and the prize money on offer?

It’s taking place on December 16 and will last for four days. Our sponsors include ZOTAC, PakDukaan, AA’LA Solutions, Wild Ogre Studios, Tech4Gamers, Games&Geeks (shop), Gooline Gaming Zone and others.

Gooline Gaming Zone

There will be four games: FIFA16 on PS4 and on PC we have COD4, Dota 2 and CS:GO. We expect at least 250 gamers from across Pakistan to compete in the event.

Prize money for games are:

FIFA 16 – Rs. 10,000/-

Dota 2 – Rs. 20,000/-

CS:GO – Rs. 30,000/-

COD4 – Rs. 30,000/-

How did your last event go? How was the feedback?

It was great. Gamers described it as the best event they had attended so far. We also got suggestions and positive criticism from our participants, which was really helpful. People from across Pakistan came.

Although it was our first event, we had some known gamers on our platform, which helped us reach others. I would like to thank Mr. Bilal a.k.a. RattlesnK..!! for his participation. Our management team was superb; most of them are not professional gamers but working on managerial positions. We had some difficult last-moment choices to make but we managed to make good decisions that helped in nicely concluding the event.

What have you learned from your last event?

It was a nice experience. As students, we had some experience of organizing university level events in the past, but this experience was nothing like that.

There is a lot to learn from our last event. We learned that not everyone was there for the money; some wanted experience better gaming experience and the sheer thrill of it, so we have included more games this time and introduced better matchmaking experience. The participants include some highly professional teams, and others that are afraid to play against them. It’s a continually evolving process, and at day end, we want everyone to feel appreciated and be happy.

We know it takes a lot to travel all the way to another city, and return back empty handed. Our sponsors have promised giveaways this time, so if all goes well, nobody would have to return empty-handed.

What challenges do you face when running events like this?

There are a couple of challenges that we faced last time, which we’ve encountered this time around too. Getting international sponsors is one of our top priorities, but because of the bad precedent set by some organizers who didn’t hand out prizes or distributed the budget for the event, we had trouble getting the best sponsors for our previous event. We did, however, manage to get ASUS on board. Their management was involved in the prize distribution and closely monitored everything. The team was happy with the dedication and feedback. The thing is, without good sponsors, it is difficult to provide the facilities or prize money that we plan and the winners rightfully deserve. Another one of our biggest challenges pertains to players, who travel all the way from Karachi and Abbottabad, which makes it difficult to set proper even dates.

How do you prevent cheating in these games? What do you do to make sure things don't go wrong, like issues with systems breaking down or electricity problems.

For CS:GO and Dota 2, Steam has VAC banning system, which mostly takes care of in-game hacks. Apart from that, our tournament managers are really great. They take care of all players and take action whenever needed. We disqualify the whole team if any player is found cheating through any means. We provide our own systems (in collaboration with the hired gaming zone) and they are raid-based, so nothing can be installed on the systems. We have two great game-server managers and also a couple of IT engineers who check the systems before the game starts, and also recheck them between any intervals. We are really particular about systems breaking down and that's why our own IT team works closely with the gaming zone’s team. For security reasons, we bring our own servers; both generators and UPS are in place for an uninterrupted gaming experience.

What equipment are gamers allowed to bring?

Gamers are allowed to bring their keyboard, mouse and mouse pads, and their own headphones. We don’t allow hardware that needs drives or software installations because we don’t want to compromise systems with viruses or spend time setting them up. If players' hardware doesn’t work, they have to play with what we provide them with.

What drives PGR to organize these events?

Ah, this is an interesting question. In the business world there is always a bottom line, but in reality there are things which don’t have a bottom line. We are doing this to a) do away with the negative image of the Pakistani gaming community, and b) trying to portray Pakistan as an emerging country for advanced hardware, by gaining the trust of international companies. Also, we want to promote healthy activities in our society; we are trying to promote esports in Pakistan.

We hope that one day Pakistan will get acknowledged by the international esports fraternity. If we look at this from another perspective, we are promoting more usage of computers, which in results will build a spark in the youth to pursue the field of game development. Our goal is to bring Pakistan’s gaming community to participate in international esports tournaments. esports is now larger than the Olympics. We have won gold medals in Olympics in the past, and we will win gold medals in esports very soon.

What are your future plans?

We are happy with what we have done, we are pleased about doing it again, and in the future you’ll see that we’ll do it again, making it even better. We love the support and feedback we are getting. We are also thinking about organizing a ComiCon but we’ll not do it until we see that we are really making a difference.

Noman Ansari is the editor-in-chief of IGN Pakistan and can be found on Twitter.